ICU 2026 JR Automation Journey by

OVERALL REFLECTION Brian

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

During our time at JR Automations we had multiple fun experiences. On the first day we did different activities we got snacks from Meijer, we did a team building challenge with marshmallows and toothpicks with different restrictions. Throught the first week we tried many new things like new foods such as thai food and a kuwano melon. We had multiple roadblocks through our journey. In the end though JR thought the idea was great.

Reflection

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

What went well in this stage?

What surprised you?

What would you do differently?

Reflection-Brian

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

We came up with ideas for a solution to solve JR Automation's problem. When we got back from lunch we asked a few people if they do the water challenge, we found out that many of them were not invested in the challenge. After we came back and disscused what info we got from the employees. Last we went to a few more people about what they think about our idea.

Reflection

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

What went well in this stage?

What surprised you?

What would you do differenly?

Idea Generating

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

Checking In

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

How do you plan on checking in with your groups during and after the investigation stage?

Team Building

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

Reflection

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

We had a good, thought out idea that is realistic and easy for JR to implement. We are a little surprised that we didn't end up winning but we had an outstanding idea that we think will be implemented in the future.

Gaining Insight

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

Feedback & Reflection

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

today was the day we went to presented to the CTC. we improved our presentation from when we practiced. people really like our learning lunch with juggling. the presentation felt very interactive and humanized. some feedback that we got was to have a digital version of the Jr connect. We got really good feedback. We then went to Olive garden to celebrate Keegan's birthday/ us finishing the program now we came back to Jr and now looking at how we can make it better

Employability Skill

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

Authentic Audience

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

Entry Event

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

Standards & Skills

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

Our Driving Question

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

Design Challenge/Project Description

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

Narrowing Down

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

We filled out 100 post it's with different idea's later we categorized them into five different categories. After we did that we narrowed it down to a top 10.

Uncover Need to Knows

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

Gaining Empathy

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

FINAL Reflection

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

Stakeholders

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

Driving Question Understanding

futureprepd2 — 2026-04-01 15:31:11 UTC

We had to find our own definition of enrich in order to fully understand our driving question. We also had to use our interviews of communities to figure out how we wanted to solve this problem.

Meet Ms. Tew

2026-06-11 12:52:49 UTC

Hi! My name is Taylor Tew and I co-teach American History and World History at Coopersville High School.

Meet Mr. Ritchie

2026-06-11 12:56:59 UTC

Hi! My name is Brendan Ritchie and I teach math at Hamilton High School.

2026-06-11 12:59:34 UTC

How can we enrich the family and community "vibe" within JR Automation?

Shopping for snacks at Meijer!

2026-06-16 12:50:19 UTC

We worked in two teams to shop for snacks for the other team!

Reflection on the entry event!

2026-06-16 12:55:44 UTC

Team 1 Building a Marshmallow Bridge

2026-06-16 12:58:10 UTC

Reflection - Keegan Riha

2026-06-16 13:00:09 UTC

The first day went swimmingly, we started off by meeting everybody before promptly getting the most important thing of all.... SNACKS, without good snacks it is nearly impossible to get work done. We then dove into JR Automation learning about their company and their objectives before participating in a marshmallow-bridge building challenge where one participant was blindfolded, and another was deafened using ANC headphones, and the last was unable to talk, we had to work through these differences in order to succeed. We got a great lunch at Chick-Fil-A and then worked on getting to know each other on a deeper level using creative DNA before trying to get a perspective on JR using an empathy map of the CEO Dave DeGraff.

Reflection - Esther

2026-06-16 13:00:16 UTC

I would say that getting snacks went pretty well. The activities went well also. JR automation was a lot more interesting than I had expected. I would have done the marshmallow activity differently and planned it out a bit better.

Discussing our driving question

2026-06-16 13:01:17 UTC

Reflection Deacon & Brian

2026-06-16 13:02:51 UTC

First we went to Meijer and got snacks and jimmy(orange melon). When we got back we did the marshmallow bridge team building activity. We went to chick-fil-a for lunch and Dean talked to us about teamwork. After we did the creative DNA "Test". Finally we made a empathy map about the CEO.

Team 2 Building a Marshmallow Tower

2026-06-16 13:02:52 UTC

Reflection - Prasheta

2026-06-16 13:03:52 UTC

The first day went well, the entry activities and our understanding of the question went pretty well. I learned more about JR automation and it was interesting to hear about the things they do. We also did the empathy map about the CEO, and got to known one another better!

Reflection- Paul

2026-06-16 13:03:54 UTC

I feel that the foreshadowing leading to the driving question was cool. Seemingly unrelated activities got us thinking about community, and interactions, and communication. Although we did many productive things, they also served the purpose of building a good relationship between all of the members of the group. The first day also served the purpose of letting us get to know JR, although I'd like to know even more.

Reflection-Reneesh

2026-06-16 13:12:26 UTC

The first day was really good. We started up by going to Meijer and getting snacks. WE split into 2 groups and made shopping lists. When we get to Meijer they said we had to shop of the other group. Than we played our entry even were one person was blind,deaf and couldn't speak and we had to build bridges. Than we went to chick-fil-a because the restaurant related to our driving question. At the restaurant we talked about the driving question a little. Once we came back we started to get to know each other better. We ended by doing the family maps.

We shared our fun masks with the CEO!

2026-06-16 13:31:23 UTC

We did the "creative DNA" and "6 word memoir" protocols to get to know one another!

2026-06-16 13:33:54 UTC

2026-06-16 13:36:05 UTC

Teamwork, communication, professionalism, budgeting

Me too!

2026-06-17 12:58:30 UTC

A fun way for us to get to know each other! And the person with the most interesting fact got to pick where we ate lunch.

Reflection after the interview

2026-06-17 12:59:25 UTC

Talked about main key points and about the information we gained from our meeting with the Recruiting Director at JR, Kristine.

Pluses and Deltas

2026-06-17 13:00:07 UTC

What are some positives and what are some things we want to change about ourselves and our group. A little reflection about the past few days.

Paul eating Pho

2026-06-17 13:01:05 UTC

Lunch at Rock 'N' Thai

2026-06-17 13:01:31 UTC

The coolest people on the team

2026-06-17 13:02:14 UTC

Creating Interview Questions

2026-06-17 13:05:25 UTC

Working as a team to determine what to ask our stakeholders!

Our Team!

2026-06-17 18:06:43 UTC

2026-06-17 18:10:12 UTC

Too smart for magic tricks, Brendan did not anyone fooled!

2026-06-17 18:11:16 UTC

No words

Protocols Today -6/17

2026-06-17 18:12:24 UTC

Pains and Gains
Customer/Admin Profile
Interviewing
Deltas and Pluses

Protocols Today - 6/16

2026-06-17 18:16:22 UTC

Interviewing
Me Too Protocol
Rip/Slap/Pass
Reflection discussions

Farmer's Market Interviews

2026-06-17 18:17:35 UTC

Pluses and Deltas -6/18

2026-06-18 13:16:18 UTC

Interview with Jeff

2026-06-18 13:17:05 UTC

Jeff spoke to us about the move and his thoughts about teamwork!

Kiwano Melon

2026-06-18 13:17:48 UTC

Profile for Admins vs. Floor workers/employees

2026-06-18 13:17:59 UTC

Brian tries a new fruit!

2026-06-18 13:18:11 UTC

2026-06-19 12:36:29 UTC

Feeding the fish and turtles on our brain break!

2026-06-19 12:37:16 UTC

Wildflowers

2026-06-19 12:37:45 UTC

Reflection-Paul

2026-06-19 12:39:09 UTC

We came up with the idea of having a points based system on an app. However, after returning from lunch, we realized a similar system was already in place, and the workers on the floor didn't use it at all. Now, we need to come up with a new idea, that incorporates the entire company.

2026-06-19 12:39:28 UTC

2026-06-19 12:40:19 UTC

Reflection - Prasheta

2026-06-19 12:40:33 UTC

It surprised me how we got to a solution pretty soon or like a main idea for a solution, and how many of our thoughts were similar and how we could get 5-10 big main ideas from the 100 ideas we had altogether.

Sorting our 100 Ideas!

2026-06-19 12:40:59 UTC

Reflection -Keegan

2026-06-19 12:41:31 UTC

We all tried new food including eating our mascot Jimmy the kowano melon. We did pluses and deltas in order to figure out what we were doing well and what we still needed to work on, this was a helpful visual we looked back at multiple times throughout the day. We took a lot of time to create interview questions making sure that they were answering our question, we then interviewed Jeff the operations manager to gain insight on how both he and those that work for him would feel after the merge.

Reflection-Deacon

2026-06-19 12:53:50 UTC

First we connected with Jeff. Then we had a lot of visitors that just came in and out. then we went to do some pluses and deltas. we came up with some ideas. went to panda express and got feed back from floor workers. we came back in and tried to think out side of the box.

Reflection - Esther

2026-06-19 12:55:31 UTC

First we interviewed Jeff, the operations manager, and asked about what he thought of the consolidation and relationships. After that we did 100 ideas for enriching the family and community vibe. We worked on organizing them without talking and then narrowed them down. For lunch we ate at Panda Express. It was pretty good but not as good as Rock n Thai. Then a few people asked some floor workers about using the water challenge where how much water you drink is uploaded for a prize for the most water and none of them did. They said they were too busy which helps us think about what kind of things they would use.

Protocols Today -6/18

2026-06-19 12:58:41 UTC

Pluses and Deltas
Interviews
Top 10 List
100 Ideas
3-12-5 with AI
With lots of reflection of course!

Reflection-Reneesh

2026-06-19 13:06:48 UTC

We started off the day by interviewing Jeff, the Operations Manager at JR HQ. We gained a lot of vital information that helped us get a really good understanding of the situation. Next, we started generating ideas and came up with 100 of them. We then began narrowing the ideas down. As we did, the top 10 ideas all seemed to follow the same concept. Completing an activity and receiving a reward for doing it.

Before lunch, we decided that we were going to create an app that users could download and use to earn rewards. Points gained from completing activities could be redeemed for rewards. Then we got hungry and went to lunch.

When we were coming back from lunch, we realized that there was already an app similar to this idea. We then set up an interview with the Benefits Team for tomorrow. We asked people about this benefits app, and many said they were too busy to use it.

Reneesh and Deacon dropping threes at the arcade

2026-06-22 18:00:39 UTC

Brain Break Walk

2026-06-22 18:21:06 UTC

2026-06-22 18:21:49 UTC

We interviewed Mallory, who works in the benefits department

2026-06-22 18:23:30 UTC

Julie helped us set up all these interviews!

We think best outside :)

2026-06-22 18:24:47 UTC

Critical Friends!

2026-06-22 18:31:01 UTC

We interviewed Kristen from HR to answer our questions

2026-06-22 18:32:33 UTC

2026-06-24 17:48:41 UTC

The presentation went well, we got a lot of feedback.

Reflection-Paul

2026-06-24 17:57:52 UTC

We did our first run-through of our presentation to Stephanie, the talent acquisition director. We got a lot of feedback, and edited our presentation for the next day.

Reflection-Reneesh

2026-06-24 18:10:28 UTC

We had multiple people see our presentation. Stephanie was the first person to listen to our presentation, she gave us a lot of critical feedback that set us up really well for presentation at the CTC. I think we did really well and have a good chance at winning.

Monkey in the middle after our final pitch

2026-06-25 14:19:24 UTC

Final Pitch

2026-06-25 14:20:05 UTC

Learning Lunch audience attempts

2026-06-25 14:20:43 UTC

JR Connect

2026-06-25 14:21:19 UTC

Reflection-Reneesh

2026-06-25 14:25:49 UTC

We finished our presentation, everyone really liked our presentation all the JR ambassadors were laughing and enjoying the speech. After that we found out that we lost to Corewell health. We tried our best, and gave it a fight!!

Overall Reflection - Prasheta

2026-06-25 14:29:26 UTC

I really liked this group and had fun working with JR Automation. I think we did really well and had a hard question that we had a really good solution for. I think we also took all our feedback and use it to enhance our presentation and continue to make it better. Overall it was a good team project and I think we did really well.

Reflection - Keegan

2026-06-25 14:29:30 UTC

As a team we came up with a great solution and had a great time doing it! I wouldn't change much for next year, we could have dove deeper into specifics but thats not the project being given to us. We figure out the solution they do all the nitty gritty and logistics. Great time with great people and a fantastic solution that we hope JR will look into.

OVERALL REFLECTION-Paul

2026-06-25 14:32:02 UTC

I really liked the way this program made us work collaboratively. I think one thing that I want to change next year is not wasting time stuck on one idea. I also think there were some stretches of the day where we were less productive, or just distracted. I think if our slideshow had been more polished/rehearsed earlier on we would've won. We took all our feedback, came up with a great solution, and even though the presentation could've been better, I think it was still great. I think our business partners like our idea, and overall we were very successful.

Final Reflection-Reneesh

2026-06-25 14:35:05 UTC

These 2 weeks have very fun and interesting. From not being able to do a u turn to being locked in after lunch. We came in a close 2nd. We tried our best. I am going to this program again next year. I think we could have practiced the presentation more. I am more experienced in this program and excited to lock in next year.

Reflection - Esther

2026-06-25 14:37:51 UTC

I think that we thought of some good things and worked together well. Next year, I would like to speak up more at the beginning about my opinions. We got some feedback from the judges that we could have an online source for people who wanted to access the bulletin board away from work.

Reflection- Deacon

2026-06-25 14:40:29 UTC

I had a absolute blast these 2 weeks have been really enjoyable. There are a lot of people i met and talk to that i never would think I would. JR automation has earned a place in my heart. I learned a lot. Presentation was fun and I got put of my comfort zone. I learned what JR actually is. There are a lot of memories I made. Thank you JR

2026-06-25 14:53:43 UTC

We created a three part solution to our driving question. We want to improve advertisement and marketing for the Workplace Wellness app, created "JR Connect" bulletin board for the break room to advertise upcoming events, and redo the break room and add games.